E41 Small Batch: Wine Beer Hybrids

Home Brew Rock Stars Podcast

PODCAST: The crew explores wine beer hybrids, harvesting 130 year-old shipwrecked yeast, beer "only" lent and Marcus King Band.

Wine beers ... they're not new, but the interest to create them from American craft brewers is growing. The idea of combining grapes and malt is not that far fetched. We have seen a few ales in the past that have been aged in a wine barrel, with the results being a pleasant surprise. The newest trend called Brut ales are an example, although they do not use grapes but rather an enzyme to achieve the champagne like results. For home brewers, until the BJCP releases its next update of style categories these vinocervisia type of brews (much like Brut IPA) it will fall under Category 19, Experimental Beer.

Of course, we do some beer tastings, including Sparkling Swan Ale - Lagunitas, a 6.5% sparkling beer-wine hybrid brewed with a moderate hops, a light malt backbone and wine grapes that's super bubbly like champagne. We also sip on Always the Hard Way from Pig Minds, an 8.7% American Imperial IPA with a traditional piney-citrus hop front and boozy backend...yum yum in a can! We also taste Brent's NEIPA style home brew from 2018, which has surprisingly help it's nice hop character.

BEER NEWS: An Ohio man is consuming only beer for Lent That's right, just like the monks used to do it back in the 1600s, Del Hall, director of sales at Fifty West Brewing Company, plans to spend Lent fasting, using beer as his only calorie intake. Del started his first meal replacement with Spare Parts, a chocolate maple and tasted almond stout is 8.1 percent ABV and a week into Lent and he'd lost 15.2 pounds.

Yeast from bottles in 1886 shipwreck makes new brew[AP] The most distinguishing feature of Jamie Adams’ new ale, brewed at Saint James Brewery in Long Island, isn’t its hoppy bite but its compelling backstory — brewed from yeast in bottles of beer that went down on a doomed steamship and languished on the ocean floor for 131 years. Adams says his beer grew out of his love of scuba diving. It was brewed with yeast extracted from bottles he and fellow divers salvaged from the SS Oregon, a luxury liner from Liverpool to New York that sank off Fire Island in 1886.

ROCK OUT! We finish up listening to sound samples from the Marcus King Band, featuring a whirlwind of Warren Haynes inspired blues rock with a jazz fusion twist. Check out their masterpiece 20 minute set at Paste Studio ... simply amazing music from a 22 year-old guitar phenom ... expect more gold from these cats in the years to come.

A hearty SQUEAL to Pig Minds Brewing Co. and Artele & Co. for their awesome support and sponsorship! #drinkitup